It’s Okay To Make Mistakes!
Ummm… Let me ask you a question. What was your first ever mistake in life that you remember committing?
Interesting right? I remember mine. I was a child, perhaps 3 or 4 years old.
And I didn’t even know that what I had done was wrong. Yet I felt guilty!
Here’s my story — I stole money from my mom!
As a kid, I was very fond of ‘Pepsi’ as we used to call it. It’s not the Pepsi ‘Pepsi’ that we know of today — I’m not talking about the soft drink.
Back in the 90s, a bhaiyya would arrive on his bicycle with a thermocol box strapped to the bicycle. Inside, he carried those Pepsi popsicles — basically sweetened ice cubes in cylindrical plastic tubes. It came in different colors too — yellow, green, red, orange, etc
He’d roam the streets and mohalla ringing his cycle bell and shouting ‘Pepsi, Pepsi!’ We’d get very excited, stop playing, and rush over to buy one. They were only 10 or 20 paise back then. We’d gather around him, and he’d slice open the popsicles with a sharp blade that he always carried, handing each of us our icy treat.
So, one such afternoon, I was craving for those Pepsis but didn’t have the money. So I stole the money from under my mom’s mattress. I knew where mom kept her money.
I’d have stolen perhaps 2 rupees; I don’t remember exactly.
And as I tried to sneak out the door, my mom who was sitting near the well on the verandah of our home, called me —
“Beta idhar aao” (Son, come here)
“Haan maa..” I responded sheepishly! (Yes mom)
Somehow my mother got to know that I was up to something.
Apna hath dikhao…Kya chupa rahe ho? She asked me (Show me your hand…What are you hiding?)
More than fear or anything, I felt embarrassed. Nobody had ever told me that ‘taking’ money like that was wrong. Yet I felt guilty.
Anyway, long story short, my mom didn’t scold me or anything ..but she perhaps gave me the very first lessons of my life that I remember as an adult — to not steal.
By now you must be wondering how’s stealing okay but I’ll talk about that in a little while. I am not justifying stealing in any way, but hang on. Before I explore more on the topic, let me quickly take you through what you can expect in this blog:
Contents:
- Acceptable and unacceptable mistakes
- What are ‘Good’ mistakes?
- What are ‘Foolish’ mistakes
- Mistake Vs Crime
- What to do when you have made a mistake?
- Learning from your mistakes
- When to forgive someone who has wronged you?
Acceptable and unacceptable mistakes
Remembering that incident of stealing in the retrospective made me think, I don’t know if you’d agree with me, though; had I not made that mistake then, I’d have not known what stealing was.
Or, worse still, had I made that mistake in school, I’d imagine my teachers beating me up and calling me all sorts of names, all the while me trying to figure out what I’d done.
I was fortunate that I made that mistake in the safe confines of my home. At least, I got to know that what I had done was wrong.
This is a very obvious example, right? Unless you make a mistake, how else would you learn?
But there are certain mistakes you should never make… even if done out of ignorance…!
Unacceptable mistakes …
As a child with an underdeveloped conscience, it makes sense, and people are more than willing to forgive when you make a mistake. But when you get older, not every mistake you commit, even out of ignorance, will be forgiven.
People make mistakes because they don’t know any better, and people are often willing to forgive, but not always. There are some mistakes you should never make.
Say, if you whistled at a girl because you saw your favorite actor do it in 80s or the 90s movies and thought that’s how you woo a girl, it doesn’t really matter if you “didn’t know it was wrong.” If the girl files a case against you, you’d be jailed.
Sure, Kareena might have liked the way you flirt, but that doesn’t mean Karishma would like it, too. You don’t do such things. Period.
That’s why when you meet people of other cultures, it’s best to always figure out in advance what’s acceptable and what’s not.
The fire drill story..
We were once in the basement of our office for a mandatory fire drill. We were taking turns to learn how to use the fire extinguisher to douse out the fire. One girl, somehow, didn’t get it right, and that’s okay, it was her first time.
Seeing this, a mid-aged man in his late 40s or perhaps early 50s tried to lighten up the environment —
“Madam, aap ise nahi sambhal payenge toh kitchen kaise sambhalenege?” (Madam, if you can’t handle this, how will you handle (fire) in kitchen)…
There was no malice in his voice. He meant no harm. It was just that he didn’t know any better.
Such remarks are very common in rural India, and most women don’t take offense because it’s said in a mood of jest. Perhaps some do, but from my observation, from what I’ve seen, most don’t, or at least they don’t show it. (I could be wrong as well).
Nevertheless, my colleague was offended by the remark, and she called him out. The poor man didn’t even realize what he had done wrong.
That colleague may have forgiven the old man but some things people never forget, for example, like how you made someone feel when you insulted them..
Abuse in any form, whether verbal or nonverbal is unacceptable.
4…take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go.
5 Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.
6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
James 3:4 – 6
The Good Mistake ..
What’s a good mistake?
I once heard a story of a father who gave money to his children to invest in the stock market.
“Go make mistakes,” he said.
The father knew his children would incur losses, yet he still gave them the money. Unless they experimented themselves, how would they learn?
That’s a good mistake. Even if you made a mistake, it’s not a waste. You still have learned something, and the next time you invest, you’d invest from a position of experience and not ignorance.
So, a good mistake is a mistake that leads to better outcomes in the long run and is a result of creative thinking and bold action. To increase your odds of winning in life, you’ve got to make good mistakes i.e., taking calculated risks.
The foolish mistake
Let’s take the same example of investing.
Say you have money and you want to invest that in intraday trading. Now there is a difference between taking calculated risks and gambling..
Now I don’t know much about intraday trading. So I asked a friend who does it and he knows what he’s doing. From what I understand, people who make a lot of money trading, do so with the help of bots.
Based on how they have programmed it, these bots do the trading for them… So there are actually people like my friend who know exactly what they’re doing with their money.
And then there are others who gamble and lose all their money. This is foolishness.
There’s another category of people who know how intraday trading works, but they get greedy. They think, “O, I’ve earned sooo much, let me put the rest of my money as well, I’ll earn even more profits.“
Why do you want to be so desperate for money that you want to risk everything in pursuit of even more?
Morgan Housel, in The Psychology of Money, writes about the dangers of not having enough.
He writes, “ Let me offer two examples of not having enough, and what they can teach us.”
He then goes on to explain the life story of Rajat Gupta, a millionaire who could have done anything he wanted in life but ended up ruining his career and reputation because of greed:
Rajat Gupta was born in Kolkata and orphaned as a teenager. People talk about the privileged few who begin life on the third base. Gupta couldn’t even see the baseball stadium.
What he went on to achieve from those beginnings was simply phenomenal.
By his mid 40s, Gupta was CEO of McKinsey, the world’s most prestigious consulting firm.
He retired in 2007 to take on roles with the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. He partnered …with Bill Gates.
“… From the slums of Kolkata, Gupta had quite literally become one of the most successful businessmen alive. With his success came enormous wealth. By 2008, Gupta was reportedly worth $100 million. It’s an unfathomable sum of money to most. A five percent Annual return of that much money generates almost $600 an hour, 24 hours a day”
He could have done anything he wanted in life.
But what he wanted, by all accounts, wasn’t to be a centa-millionaire. Rajat Gupta wanted to be a billionaire.
Morgan Housel then goes on to give a lot of detail about how Gupta found a lucrative side hustle, but I’ll not get much into it.
Long story short, because of greed, Rajat Gupta messed up and was prosecuted and jailed for indulging in insider trading that earned him a whopping $17 million in profits.
In the blink of an eye, he lost everything that he earned over the course of his life.
A foolish mistake is a costly mistake!
Mistake Vs. Crime
While doing my Master’s, we had a subject on law, and one of the books our professors asked us to read was “An Enquiry into Ethical Dilemmas in Social Work.”
There we learned of something called the lesser of the greater evil.
So what exactly is this concept?
Say, suppose person A kills person B.
It’s a crime by law, no doubt. But what if person A killed person B in self-defense?
Many years ago, there was news on TIMESNOWNEWS about a woman who slit the throat of her rapist in self-defense… She was cleared of all her charges by the sessions court in Mumbai.
Now, did this woman commit a mistake or was it a crime?
What is the main difference between a mistake and a crime?
The main difference is while a crime is intentional in nature, mistakes are not.
What that man did to that woman was a crime. He was intentional about harming her. It wasn’t a mistake. On the other hand, the woman’s intent was not to harm him and so even though she killed the man who tried to rape her, the court still acquitted her of her charges.
There are other such examples as well. Israel Palestine conflict for instance…In their war against the Hamas, you’d have often heard Benjamin Netanyahu say, Israelis have the right to defend themselves!
Ever wondered why the Israelis often say that?
… From the argument of the lesser of the greater evil!
When both countries are at each other’s throats, accusing each other of occupying their lands, it’s hard to judge who is right and who is wrong. Yet people have taken sides.
For example, leaders in the West have sided with Israel while the Muslim world has largely sided with Palestine. They believe Palestinians are responding in self-defense against years of oppression by Israel.
But Douglas Murray, the British author, and conservative political commentator, presents a unique argument for why he doesn’t buy into the arguments of the Palestinians by pointing to the mannerism in which the Hamas carried out the October 7 attacks, making no distinction between military targets and civilians. According to him, while Israels are responding in self-defense, Hamas is not, as they deliberately target both military and civilian areas without distinction.
Similarly, the Indian armed forces, too, conduct military operations, as a form of necessary evil against terrorism for the greater good of humanity.
You see where I am getting to? Killing people is a crime. But when people are out there with an intent to kill you, retaliating in self-defense isn’t a crime, as was the case of the woman who was acquitted by the Mumbai sessions court.
Crimes are intentional, mistakes are not.
When people ram their cars into pedestrians on the sidewalk or the street
Here’s another example of the difference between a mistake and a crime.
People don’t start their day thinking they’ll drive over people. Such incidents are often accidents occurring without an intent.
Yet why are these incidents considered crimes and not mistakes?
The key factor here isn’t the driver’s intention but the fact that they’ve violated a law designed to protect public safety. If you were driving at a safe speed and not under the influence of alcohol, it’s unlikely you would hit someone. However, if your reckless driving leads to someone’s death, your actions are not merely a mistake but a crime.
What to do when you have made a mistake?
There are a couple of things:
- First is self-reflection. Acknowledge your own mistake internally. Reflect on your own behavior first. Mistakes are often a ‘two way street’, meaning they are committed by both parties involved in the conflict. But whether or not the other person acknowledges their mistake, you work on yourself to being a better person.
- Second, apologize and make up for it whenever you can. Sometimes that is not possible. But whenever you can, do it, whether the person forgives you or not. While working at a rehab many years ago, we always counseled our patients to make amends. We followed the 12 Step Recovery process.
Not saying you are an alcoholic but the principles mentioned in the 12 Steps can be applied to life in general as well. You can read more about this here: Making Amends in Addiction Recovery!
Learning from your mistakes ..
This is very crucial.
People who don’t self-reflect, it’s very hard for them to grow in life. Sooner or later, the mistakes they have been making all along will ALWAYS catch up to them
This reminds me of a song written by an elderly gentleman named Frank Watkinson. The song is titled This Could Be My Last Song and one of the stanzas reads like this:
They say that wisdom comes with age,
(but) that’s not always the case
You’d be a fool to judge a wise man
By the lines upon his face!
Whether you are young or old, if you don’t self-reflect your life and behavior, you’ll never really grow!
When to forgive someone?
I know it’s easier said than done, but you should ALWAYS forgive the person who has wronged you. When you forgive someone, you’re not doing them a favor but you are doing yourself a favor.
By letting go off an offense, you are only setting yourself free from the grudge and bitterness that has entangled you.
I know it’s hard but not impossible. Just let go of the bitterness for your own sake.
Now, forgiveness does not mean forgetting an offense. It simply means not seeking revenge or harming the other person.
Neither does forgiveness mean that you have to continue being in touch with people who have harmed you. If the harm caused was so bad and if you know the other person won’t change, forgiveness can also mean cutting them off completely for the greater good of your loved ones and your health.
Conclusion
Life is full of ups and downs. While we aim for perfection, mistakes will happen. Therefore, it’s important to tell the difference between small mistakes that teach us lessons and big mistakes (i.e., crimes) that can cause harm.
Some mistakes help us grow by letting us learn and adapt. Others can be dangerous and have serious consequences. It’s wise to know the difference and make choices that match our values and goals.
When we do make a mistake, it’s key to:
1. Admit to and take responsibility for it.
2. Understand what went wrong and why.
3. Learn from it to avoid making the same mistake again.
4. Say sorry if you’ve hurt someone.
5. Try to fix the situation if possible.
6. Move on and use what you’ve learned in the future.
Mistakes don’t define us. How we handle them shows our true character. By seeing mistakes as chances to grow, we can become more resilient, wise, and successful in life.
Share this blog with someone who needs to hear this 🙂
